


give me both your hands (to make it up to you)

by crownsandbirds



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Childhood Memories, Childhood Trauma, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other, Playing, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sign Language, and your captain plays with them and comforts them, as a manifestation of trauma, is there a tag for when the ghost of your childhood visits you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 14:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18500989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/pseuds/crownsandbirds
Summary: "He's crying, huddled in a corner. The iron mask reflects the moonlight streaming from the window.Sanji refuses to call him by name. If he does, it'll make it more real, this ghost of a past he would do anything to forget, this specter of a boy and his cold iron mask, this bundle of bones and weak flesh and big, terrified eyes."about that desperate feeling of wanting to go back in time and give to the child you were all the love they never got.alternatively, the child in the iron mask cries, Sanji can't sleep, and Luffy can hear him.





	give me both your hands (to make it up to you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [okayantigone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/gifts).



> "Hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath. Don’t make a noise,  
> don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will  
> come back from the dead for you. This could be a city. This could be a  
> graveyard. This could be the basket of a big balloon. Leave the lights  
> on. Leave a trail of letters like those little knots of bread we used to  
> dream about. We used to dream about them. We used to do a lot of  
> things. The radio’s playing my favorite song. Leave the lights on. Keep talking. I’ll  
> keep walking toward the sound of your voice."
> 
> (richard siken)

The child is crying. 

 

Sanji can't sleep. The long, drawn-out sobs and the sharp, desperate intakes of breath and the  _ wailing _ \- he shifts and turns in his bed, careful not to make too much noise and wake someone up, and looks at the child. 

 

He's crying, huddled in a corner, curled up in a ball to occupy as little space as possible, breathing in short little bursts as if trying not to take up too much oxygen. The iron mask reflects the moonlight streaming from the window. 

 

Sanji refuses to call him by name. If he does, it'll make it more real, this ghost of a past he would do anything ( _ anything _ ) to forget, this specter of a boy and his cold iron mask, this bundle of bones and weak flesh and big, terrified eyes. The child wraps his arms around his knees, his hands surprisingly beautiful for someone so distorted by sadness, and sobs softly, in this heartbreaking manner that only scared children do when they feel alone and desperate for someone to save them. 

 

Sanji doesn't know what to do. He clings tighter to his blanket and watches the child. 

 

He knows no one else in the ship can hear him. It's a comfort of sorts, knowing the miserable memory of his childhood made into this trembling little thing doesn't keep anyone else up at night; but it's also a sad déjà vu he can't for the life of him appreciate: that still here, so many years later, still his crying isn't heard, still no one's sleep is stirred by this painfully obvious expression of bone-deep sadness. 

 

Some desperations only matter to the one who feels them. 

 

He moves to get up from his bed and do something - usually the child calms down a bit when he gets to talk to someone, and sometimes just the sight of Sanji is enough to lower his loud sobs to a more acceptable volume - and he hears a rustling on the bed above his, and he  _ freezes _ . 

 

It's Luffy's bed, he knows - Luffy always gets the top bunker, and even without that knowledge, his captain's presence is just too strong for him to ever be able to forget about him. At first, Sanji thinks he's having a nightmare - those are painfully common after Marineford, after everything - but then Luffy gets up, and stretches his arms to silently lower himself to the floor, and walks in a straight path towards the child. 

 

Sanji is frozen, his face half-hidden by the blanket in a childish instinct of  _ if I can't see them, they can't see me,  _ and he watches as Luffy crouches down in front of the crying little ghost. 

 

"Hey," he can hear Luffy whisper in this extremely soft voice, soothing and gentle. "What's wrong?"

 

The child shakes his head and curls up around himself further, eyes big and terrified and teary. 

 

Luffy sits down, legs crossed as if he himself is a child, and lifts his hands up, non-threatening and sleepy slow. "I won't hurt you," he says. "It's okay. I'm Luffy. Do you know me?"

 

Again, the child shakes his head. 

 

Luffy smiles. "I know you. Sanji. That's your name, right?"

 

A careful nod. The child inches a bit closer to Luffy, his little shoulders still shaking with the aftershocks that come after crying so hard. He's not crying now, surprised and confused as he is with someone else other than Sanji being able to see him. 

 

Sanji himself is so surprised he's paralized on the spot. It shouldn't come as such a shock - he knows, just as all of them do, that Luffy is  _ special _ , he can hear things, the voice of all things, he can feel their hearts and unwrap convoluted feelings and make foreign thoughts into speech. As befitting of a future king. But  _ still _ . To have his captain see this misery, this broken, unsavory failure of the kid he used to be, this undeniable bundle of remnants and leftovers, the worst part of Sanji's life -

 

Even more, to witness how  _ kind _ Luffy is nonetheless. How slowly he moves, how his voice is laced with nothing but love. 

 

Sanji suddenly wants to leave his bed and push back his blankets and be the one curled in the corner, be the one receiving this unconditional affection that he never got to have when he  _ was _ the scared child with the world limited by the edges of the heavy mask locked around his face. 

 

Not the affection from his mother, rare and heartbreaking, their time together punctuated by her constant coughing and her weak limbs, lazy with the slowness that comes with sickness. Not the affection from his sister, who couldn't be seen with him, who watched as he was kicked and beaten to an inch of his life, who bandaged his wounds and blamed them on his weakness, who saved him but still side-glanced everything about him as if she wished he wasn't himself, as if she wished he would just die already so she didn't have to witness him cry and suffer all the way to his death. 

 

_ This _ affection. The one he knows now is real, the one that comes with gentle voice and sunlit smiles and kind hands - because for all that Luffy can't do careful, not for the life of him, he can do  _ soft _ , and he does it so well, moving closer to the child Sanji used to be, not disgusted by his tears, not dismissing his shaking, but slowly coaxing him from out of his dark corner, into the small spot illuminated by moonlight. 

 

Sanji slowly sits up on the bed.

 

Luffy raises his hands once more - the child instinctively cowers, and Sanji doesn't know how to tell him that this is  _ Luffy,  _ a person so good that he manages to erase every single bone-deep instinct to run away and make the empty spaces left into something else, something bright - and starts signing. 

 

He pinches with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.  _ Do _ . Points at the child.  _ You.  _ Loosely curls his hands into fists and brings them back to his chest.  _ Want.  _ Extends his pinkies and his thumbs, tucks the other fingers into his palms, shakes his hands a bit.  _ To play. _

 

Sanji can feel his lips parting in sheer shock. 

 

The child's eyes are wide, his head tilted in the way kids - and Luffy - do when they're confused.

 

Luffy repeats the gesture, clearer and more emphatically, but Sanji knows there's no need. He knows the little boy understood, just as he himself did, somewhere deep inside his mind the urge coming forward to say,  _ yes. I want to play. Will you play with me?  _

 

The child is frowning, but moving a bit further away from the dark corner of the men's quarters, closer to this miracle of a person who, Sanji knows, has been treating him more kindly than anyone ever has before. 

 

_ My brother couldn't hear _ , Luffy signs.  _ We can talk like this.  _

 

A pause, and a careful nod. Luffy's smile is wide, beautiful like the sun itself. 

 

Again, he signs.  _ Do you want to play? _

 

This time, both Sanji and the child sign back.  _ Yes. _

 

Luffy reaches out, stretches his arm, searches around the room before bringing back a small object in the palm of his hand. In the most natural gesture he's done ever since Sanji started seeing him, the child crouches forward and peeks into what Luffy is holding, as if he's a normal child, curious about something new, as if he could ever be normal.

 

It's a small wooden miniature of the Going Merry, that Sanji knows was handcrafted by Usopp and given as a gift to Luffy. It's remarkably detailed, the sheep head soft and inviting. 

 

_ Let's play pirates _ , Luffy signs. 

 

The child touches the sheep head with a careful finger, lifts his eyes and nods. He almost looks excited. 

 

Luffy lets him take the small ship and glances back over his shoulder, his eyes soft but knowing, staring straight into Sanji's. 

 

"Want to play pirates too?" he asks. 

 

In face of this boy, this sunshine boy with his gentle hands and his dreams and his bright eyes, what else can Sanji do? What other answer could he possibly give?

 

He pushes up from his bed and walks slowly towards the unlikely pair, sits down next to Luffy. 

 

He realizes it's probably the first time he has ever sat down to play with other people. 

 

The child is close to him now, closer than he has ever been in all those nights they stared at each other across rooms, and he's playing with the tiny Merry, making it sail through the air, his small, pretty fingers tracing its sails. When Sanji sits down next to him, he looks up, and his the corner of his eyes are crinkled, and he's  _ smiling _ \- hidden by the iron mask, but the smile is there. 

 

Sanji smiles back. "Hey."

 

Luffy giggles and opens up his hand and the child - Sanji - makes the ship navigate on his palm, like a makeshift sea. 

 

"He's so sweet," Luffy says, looking at Sanji. "Just like you."

 

They play, the three of them, and just doing so would already be so much more, so much better than Sanji ever had, but playing with Luffy is something else entirely - his captain comes up with the craziest ideas, the best stories, the most exciting plots; they sail to Sky Island and the depths of the ocean, they meet mermaids and angels and aliens, pirates and marines, princesses and kings, they fight monsters and save people and go to so many parties, Luffy's dreamlike voice taking the two of them and their small wooden ship to places Sanji as a child could've never imagined, never fathomed in his wildest bursts of imagination. 

 

Soon they're all laughing, little Sanji signing excitedly his own ideas, clinging to Luffy's hand and asking him to come up with more stories. Sanji watches, mostly, laughs every now and then - because he's only human and Luffy is a force of nature even in something as mundane as child's play - but he wonders,  _ is this what a normal childhood feels like? Is this how Luffy grew up, with stories and toys? Is this what he lost when he lost Ace? _

 

In his stories, Luffy mentions a very brave warrior with fists of fire and a warm heart. In the corner of his ever-present smile, there's an edge of sadness, but the fact he plays at all, that he sits down to make this ghost-like leftover of bad memories laugh - Sanji wraps an arm around his shoulders and whispers, "Thank you."

 

Luffy turns his smile at him. "Thank you for letting me." 

 

When the sun starts to rise outside the window, the child is sleepy, his head lolling on Luffy's shoulder. Luffy giggles once more, gathers up the small bundle in his arms and puts him on his lap. The top of the iron mask presses against the scar on his chest. Remnants of past hurt. 

 

"And then," Luffy whispers, arms wrapped around little Sanji, voice expressive and excited, even with how tired he must feel after staying awake the entire night, "the pirates bought a  _ lot _ of food and meat and they invited _ everyone _ in the town, and they had a  _ big party _ , and sang a song called Bink's Sake -" he looks down at the child in his lap, "do you know it?"

 

Little Sanji shakes his head. 

 

"Well, I'll sing it to you." he steals a glance at adult Sanji by his side. "We will."

 

Sanji smiles at him and nods.  _ Okay.  _

 

They sing softly. Zoro stirs in his bed, but doesn't wake, used as he is with their voices and this specific song. Little Sanji moves his head to the rhythm, his eyelids getting heavier, one of his small hands wrapped around Luffy's thumb, the other clutching at the tiny Merry. 

 

The child falls asleep. Luffy looks down at him, presses a soft kiss to the top of his head. 

 

Sanji swallows dry. His eyes fill with tears he's not willing to shed, not right now. "I'm going to make breakfast," he chokes out, gets up with some struggle. He does need to make breakfast. 

 

Luffy smiles up at him. There seems to be sunlight caught between his teeth, leaking through the corner of his grin. "Okay. I'll put him to bed."

 

Before leaving, Sanji crouches down one last time, presses a kiss to his own fingertips and, with them, touches the only small patch of skin visible through the mask, the soft, purple circles under the child's eyes, bruised and darkened by insomnia or beatings, who knows. 

 

His own absolution. Forgiveness, apologies, the terrifying amount of love he has inside his heart for this tiny, scared boy who never got to have any. 

 

In his kitchen, alone at last, his ears don't ring with the sobbing of a forgotten, pained child - instead, inside his mind, there are the echoes of laughter and the lyrics to a pirate song, a childhood that could have been, the life he has now. 

**Author's Note:**

> the deaf ace headcanon is from trell's beautiful fic "the sea it swells like a sore head" (here on ao3) and everyone should check it out;
> 
> sanji makes me so fucking sad


End file.
